Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[taro4]

Are the sentences OK?

a. I'll ask her what the problem is.
b. I'll ask her what is the problem.
c.She asked him what the problem seemed to be.
d. She asked him what seemed to be the problem.

Thank you in advance.

[2006]

a and c are good sentences. b and d not good sentences because they use question grammar even though there is no question being asked.

For illustration, I will change d to make it an acceptable sentence. She asked him, "What seemed to be the problem?".
The new sentence is still a statement but it has a real question contained within it.

[taro4]

Thank you for your answer, 2006.

Just for confirmation, could you please tell me what the subject of the question sentennce below is?

"What seems to be the problem?"

Thank you.
-Fumi

[2006]

1...I would say that "the problem" is the subject.
2...The middle sentence is not really a question; it is a polite request, so you should not put a question mark at the end.

[buddhaheart]

[taro4]

Thank you for yor replies.
Reading them, I had two extra questions.
Could you please help me with them too.

Q1. You would not say (1x) or (1y), would you?
1x. What will be that boy(in the future)?
1y. What wants to be that boy?

Q2.The question "What seems to be the problem?" seems to be based on the sentence pattern like this: "The problem seems to be (that) ..." And the subject of this sentence appears to be "seems." If so, do you not think that we shoul use "does" to form a question like this:
2x)"What does the problem seem to be?"

Thank you very much.

[2006]

Q1...You are right. I would not say 1x or 1y.

Q2..."seems" is not the subject; "seems" is a verb.
You can say 2x, which has two verbs, "does" and "seem". "What seems to be the problem?" is also correct and has only one verb.

[taro4]

Thank you very much for your reply post ,2006

I have heard this saying "To preach to Buddha"(an equivalent to Teach your granmother to suck eggs?).
But I woul like you to see what is bothering me here: One rule I have learned about how to make questions is this:

R)S[ubject]-Aux[iliary Verb](+...+Aux)-V[erb]...
into
...Aux-S-(...+Aux)-V
The point is,the be-verbs(am, is, etc) behave just like an aux, so inversion occurs.

Thus, we get (3y) from (3x):
3x. You can swim./He is a doctor.
3y. Can you swim?/Is he a doctor.
Pretty neat so far. No problem.

Now could you look at (4y). What sentence could it be based on(or derived from)?
?4x. The problem can be (that)...
4y. What can be the problem?
In addition, in (4y), if you consider the string can-be-the problem, you would have to infer, based on the Rule, that if the "problem" were the subject, the word order should have been:
can-the problem-be(=aux-S-verb), and thus the question should have looked like:
4z.What can the problem be?

This is exactly what the Rule dictates.
If we look at (4y) again, we would have to say that the"what" is the subject and the problem the complement of the verb be.

It is easy to see that these things apply to the sentence:
*)What seems to be the problem?
**)What does the problem seem to be?
and if we admit two forms of question, we also allow two forms of clause,gramatically speaking:
c)She asked him what[=S] seemed to be the problem
d)She asked him what the problem[=S] seemed to be.

What is especially puzzling to me, is that native speakers consider "the problem" in *) to be the subject of the clause. The only explanation might be that in these sentences, can and seem-to are not considered auxiliary verbs.
I would very much appreciate any suggestion.

Thank you very much.

[Lorikeet]

Thank you for your explanation. It may account for the fact that I found both of these okay:

c.She asked him what the problem seemed to be.
d. She asked him what seemed to be the problem.

But I didn't know why.

[taro4]

Thank you very much for your comment.

Then probably you would find the following sentences both acceptabel?
e)She asked him what the problem could be.
f)She asked him what could be the problem.

[2006]

Although some native speakers may say d and f, In my opinion, c and e are much better sentences, so much better that I would say that d and f are not (good)(acceptable). That's my opinion.

[taro4]

Thank you very much for your comment., 2006.
-taro3

[Lorikeet]

[taro4]

Dear Lorikeet,
Thank you for taking the trouble to stand on the witness again.
Profusely!
(And I believe you would allow me to say that this is not excluisive to you.)

Thank you very much again.
-taro4